The social networking site authors seem to fear (or loathe) most is Twitter, but once we demonstrate the power of this platform Twitter typically becomes an author’s favorite way to connect with readers. Here are seven ways Twitter matters:

1. Improved Visibility: By using the search box you can quickly find people and/or tweets that match your search term; many of these turn out to be folks you’ll want to follow, and more importantly, who will want to follow you back.
2. Sharing Views: Your readers get to know you as you link your blog posts, give them links to articles and/or websites that you think they’d like, offer up quotes, lines from your book, etc. By sharing links to info that matters to you, you can build a tribe of like-minded folks, the sort who’ll want to read your words!
3. Sharing News: You can post links to upcoming events where you’ll be signing books, or online reviews of your work, publishing release dates, etc. But be respectable of Twitter’s “give and take” mentality – if you consistently share info only about you and your work, you’ll miss the opportunity to really connect with potential readers – “social” media is, after all, about being, well, social!
4. Learning From Other Authors: Type “author” into the search field and you’ll quickly learn what readers are tweeting about other authors, and how other authors are using Twitter to build and engage their audiences.
5. Industry Insights: Follow literary agents or editors or publishers just by subscribing at Twitter to free lists. For example, we’ve built a comprehensive list of over 280 literary agents at twitter.com/WhereWritersWin/literary-agents or over 100 publishers at twitter.com/WhereWritersWin/publishers. We’ve also built lists of editors, bookstores, book reviews, authors and… well, go see! When you click on a list you’ve subscribed to or built, only tweets from that set come up, allowing you to “dial in” to the insights you want at that moment.
6. The Power of Lists: You can build your own, as many as you like, make them public or make them private. Say, for example, your book is about dolphins, and you want to connect with others talking about dolphins. After you search the term, you’ll find other people and/or Tweets dealing with the topic. Those that appeal to you, you can then add to a list so you can easily refer back to them in the future. And, by making your list public (as we’ve done for agents and editors), you can make a useful list for your own followers.
7. Research: Again, that search window works whether you’re looking for folks who know more about the subject you want to write about, or where the next big book event is!

Start slow – follow a few people a day; watch what they tweet. This will give you plenty of ideas about how to be a helpful, useful, and entertaining Twitter user, vs. those tweeting about what they had for breakfast (unless of course it was a recipe from your latest cookbook…).